Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [92]
I was twenty-one when I filled in the blanks on the fireman’s application form. I didn’t know what the job was all about then—I only knew that it was a mark of success for a neighborhood boy to become a fireman or a cop. They were secure jobs, and much respected by our elders who had lived through the depression. The nuns in the school I attended as a child never spoke to us about becoming doctors, or lawyers, only about becoming President of the United States, or a fireman, or a cop. Any of us could become President, it was our birthright for we were all second generation Irish or Italian, but we could become firemen or cops only if we applied ourselves, and managed in one way or another to get through high school—a great achievement in those days.
The day of the civil service exam was bright and summer-hot. I borrowed my brother’s old '51 Chevy, and drove to a high school in Greenwich Village where schoolteachers were going to earn time-and-a-half by proctoring the firemen’s test. There were no parking spaces, so I double-parked the car—after all I was about to become an official of the City of New York, and no policeman would dare to ticket it.
A thousand young men, armed with real or equivalency diplomas, were gathered in classrooms to answer the hundred questions and to compete for the job. A legion of hopefuls in plaid shirts and gabardine trousers, all hunched over ink-stained desks, squirming in the seats built for men five sizes smaller, and trying to remember the who-whom rule of seventh-grade grammar. It was a hot day, and I remember sweating anxiously.
Eight thousand men competed that Saturday morning in schools throughout the five boroughs of the city. The list would be promulgated a few months thereafter, and two thousand would be eligible for Department jobs over the next four years. The firemen’s test is traditionally the most difficult of all the tests for the uniformed services. More men apply to become firemen than apply for any of the other services, and because there are fewer job openings the examiner makes the test harder to pass, ensuring that the city will get the cream of New York’s employable youth. The men who failed the test that day, or who did not pass with a grade high enough to be within the two thousand selected, would seek other city jobs—the Police Department, the Transit Police, the Housing Police, the Sanitation Department. I was lucky. I passed. But I found a ten-dollar tag on my car. I decided it was a small price to pay.
I was investigated thoroughly, and my moral character was ascertained. A firefighter goes, in the course of his work, into banks, jewelry stores, and people’s homes—an applicant with a criminal record is not considered for obvious reasons. I took a strenuous physical examination in which we ran obstacle courses, climbed over walls ten feet high, lifted weights of no pounds and more—the more weight one pressed the higher the mark—broad-jumped a minimum of six feet, and did sit-ups while holding a minimum of forty pounds behind the neck. The physical examination was also competitive, and the grade was averaged with the written mark to give the applicant a final score.
Then there was the medical examination. Flat feet, missing digits, being less than 5 feet 7 inches in height, having less than 20/20 vision or less than perfect hearing, an even slightly imperfect cardiogram were all automatic disqualifies. I passed again, and two years later, in 1963, I was appointed to the rank of Fireman in the New York City Fire Department. I was engaged to be married then, and in my first year of college.
The swearing-in ceremony was brief, and after a few gratuitous and banal remarks about courage and dedication by city officials I was given the three-inch chrome maltese cross that is the badge of a firefighter. Badge number 11389, NYFD. It was a symbol of security and importance to me—and it saved me the fare each time I rode a city subway or bus. It would act in place of a ticket in many of New York’s movie houses—it is always nice to have a firefighter in the house, a